“They, in my view, skipped over it, passed it up, kept it secret throughout the whole time when it would have been relevant to the news,” she said.

“And I think that was because they were trying to defend the president and they thought that would be harmful to him.”

That’s the shocking conclusion drawn by award-winning investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson about the actions of her former bosses at CBS News — people she claims were actively involved in an effort to protect Barack Obama going into the 2012 election.

Attkisson spent 20 years as a network reporter covering Obama scandals such as the Fast & Furious gun-running and the attack on the Benghazi compound that left four Americans dead.

She quit her prestigious CBS job after clashes with management and what Attkisson described as efforts to suppress or kill stories she was working on — stories that could have been highly critical of President Obama and top officials in the administration.

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Attkisson — who has just written a book detailing her “Stonewalled” experiences at CBS as well as efforts by the Obama administration to block her reporting — blasted her former bosses in an interview on the Fox News show “MediaBuzz.”

Attkisson charges that CBS News executives purposely hid a video clip of President Obama refusing to call the Benghazi attacks an act of terrorism in order to help him get re-elected.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, took Mr. Obama to task during a presidential debate for his failure to call the attack an act of terror for 14 days — a perfect, and missed, opportunity for CBS to air the clip, Ms. Attkisson said.

“That exchange, I believe, should have been pulled out immediately after the debate, which would have been very newsy at the time,” she said.

“It was exclusive to CBS. It would have, it appears to me, proven Romney’s point against Obama. But that clip was kept secret.”

You can watch the incredibly revealing interview with Sharyl Attkisson by clicking on the video above; and when you’ve finished, your opinion of the news network brought to prominence by Walter Cronkite may never be the same.